Lev Vygotsky (1929) was a Russian psychologist who argued that culture has a major impact on a child’s cognitive development. While Piaget believed development stemmed directly from within the child, Vygotsky argued that it is the language, writings, and concepts arising from the culture that elicit the highest level of cognitive thinking (Crain, 2005). He believed that the social interactions with adults and more experienced peers can facilitate a child’s potential for learning. Without this interpersonal instruction, he believed children’s minds would not advance very far as their knowledge would be based only on their own discoveries.

Vygotsky’s best known concept is the zone of proximal development (ZPD) which is the period of time when a child is close to performing a task independently but needs assistance to complete it. Vygotsky stated that children should be taught in the zone of proximal development with the right kind of teaching. A good teacher identifies a child’s ZPD and helps the child stretch beyond it. The teacher then gradually withdraws support until the child can then perform the task unaided. Researchers have applied the metaphor of scaffolds (the temporary platforms on which construction workers stand) to this way of teaching. Scaffolding is the temporary support that parents or teachers give a child to do a task.

In contrast with Vygotsky, Piaget was highly critical of teacher-directed instruction, believing that teachers who take control of the child’s learning place the child into a passive role (Crain, 2005). Further, teachers may present abstract ideas without the child’s true understanding, and instead they just repeat back what they heard. Piaget believed children must be given opportunities to discover concepts on their own. As previously stated, Vygotsky did not believe children could reach a higher cognitive level without instruction from more learned individuals. Who is correct? Both theories certainly contribute to our understanding of how children learn.